European tour

Read an exclusive extract from 'Spaceships Over Glasgow', the new memoir by Mogwai band member Stuart Braithwaite.

We knew that the company we were in meant that we had to perform. The next day we found him in a wheelbarrow next to the hotel. Our bus was full of booze that we’d accumulated from the month on the road and we made sure to party that night. With so many bands we liked on the line-up we decided to make a weekend of it. There was a gap between the first leg of the tour and the second and we decided that we should try someone else for the second half. On the way to dinner, Michael (who was a big stoner) went looking for weed and managed to get a knife pulled on him. It was then that we worked out that he didn’t realise Belgian Francs were not the same value as French Francs and he had sold all of our T-shirts for about a tenth of what they would normally go for. We had just arrived in Prague when Stevie made a wrong turn and decided to rectify his mistake by reversing a long way down the road, a manoeuvre that was somewhat of a speciality for him. The venues in Europe treated you far better than the UK, but there were some cultural issues we had to contend with, as far as some people on the tour went. After we ended what had been a brilliant run in the UK, we went on to Europe. It was the norm for us to only manage a few hours’ sleep in whatever motel we’d got to after the show. When we actually got to Europe we realised quite quickly that Stevie’s optimism had got the better of him.